I don't know what the normal response is to cops knocking on your door. Is it to sit still silently, keep watching TV, or reading a book -- thereby making no noise inside? I think an innocent or guilty person alike would make some sort of noises inside upon hearing cops pounding on your door.

This is really a Tea Party question/scenario. The government and bureaucrats are pushing in from every angle - in your "junk," your luggage, your car, your bed, your body. Everything from red-light cameras to eminent domain, it's open season on liberty. Time to push back. Hard.

Here's a little cop secret I picked up while reporting the crime beat for 15 years: Cops let people speed.

You know how you'll be driving down the interstate and the speed limit is 65, but everybody is going 75?

There's a reason cops let people do this ... it's so that everyone is always speeding ... just a little bit. By agreement amongst cops.

And so this way, cops can pull over anyone they choose to ... since technically everybody is breaking the law and providing them with the crucial probable cause the Supreme Court requires.

If cops clamped down, people would learn over a very short period of time that they have to drive 65 to avoid a ticket. But then the police would lose their ability to pull over and interrogate whoever they want.

That's why they let you speed. They want the power to interrogate anybody they choose.

Replies Scalia: "So basically the police were taking advantage of the stupidity of the criminals, is that right? That's terrible, that's not fair, is it?"

I hate this question by Scalia, and hope it was sarcastic. Of course police can take advantage of the stupidity of criminals.

It seems established (admitted by the KY assistant AG) that if the suspects told police they could not enter without a warrant the police would not be able to claim exigent circumstances. So the best question is why silence should be "construed" as permission. If you have the right to tell them no, saying nothing should not mean yes.

I certainly hope not. There should be a incredibly high standard before the state invades a persons home. Without a warrant, there should be a reasonable expectation of serious injury or death. Not that someone might be smoking some pot. Or playing poker for money. Or stealing cable. And can we knock it off with shooting the dogs?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Kennedy uses this opportunity to ask why the smoking of marijuana itself doesn't constitute the destruction of evidence.

This reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story of insurance fraud: A man, after smoking a rare and expensive box of cigars, placed a claim that they were destroyed in a series of small controlled fires.

dbp:"This reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story of insurance fraud: A man, after smoking a rare and expensive box of cigars, placed a claim that they were destroyed in a series of small controlled fires."

Claim denied. Destruction by fire was an intentional act by the insured. Possibly arson too.

Florida: "...That's why they let you speed. They want the power to interrogate anybody they choose.

And by letting you speed ... they have carte blanche."

And just to get all catch-22ish, if you are not speeding when everyone else is--this is evidence you are trying to hide something and hence probable cause.

Really, who hasn't been driving late at night in ideal conditions and come upon someone (male and in his 20's)driving exactly the speed limit? You know he is drunk and doing his best to avoid a Breathalyzer test.

MadisonMan: Once the sewage leaves the borders of the house, the police certainly can search it without a warrant. Arguably, once the toilet is flushed, it could be searched under the theory of abandonment. You didn't flush it just to keep your turds safe, after all...

The big question in this case is whether the police created the exigency so that they didn't need to get a search warrant. If they did it in bad faith, the search is bad and its fruits will be tossed.

Even if they did it in good faith, if their acts created the exigency, the search is most likely bad. That what SCOTUS is going to be deciding.

Here, the cops went to the wrong apartment in a buy-bust. They were supposed to go to the 'apartment on the right' but they went to the 'apartment on the left', where they smelled ganja.

I have a serious problem with home invasion policing. It's extremely dangerous to the innocent, including seniors, children and pets, in other words, the very ones most needing our protection from violent armed men with attitude. And that would be true even if we had no constitution, which it usually violates in the most direct way possible. Few things piss me off as much as one of these assaults where the family is terrorized, the dog shot, house destroyed and no serious crime is prevented. Is that community better off or worse after that. Protect and serve indeed.

Really, who hasn't been driving late at night in ideal conditions and come upon someone (male and in his 20's)driving exactly the speed limit? You know he is drunk and doing his best to avoid a Breathalyzer test.

And if he's lucid enough to drive that well, then why bother to pull him over? He's causing no one any harm.

A cop pulled me over in the parking lot because he "thought I wouldn't have stopped if he weren't there". Mind you, there was no stop sign, and no legal reason to stop if he hadn't been there (which is what I told him). He told me I should be "nicer to cops". Jerk.

In Canada they have (had?) "Her Majesty's Search Warrant" which allows officers to search any boat, house, dwelling or person I think under suspicion of being involved in the drug trade I recall handed it to read. An alleged substance found in a pillow, had my friend served and deported. Had the house torn down when the Province insisted it be painted. Years later vigilantes burned down a "crack dealer" in a house under suspicion. Maybe the US should allow a similar warrant and practice, i.e., you may read this...or decriminalize cannabis.

The entire concept is offensive on it's face. The fact that authorities can act without impunity at this level and have it adjudicated as an exercise in Constitutional jurist prudence at your expense should you choose to do so to establish your rights is beyond offensive.

This will fall right in line with search and seizure precedent and there is little recourse even if you are wrongfully targeted. It's bullshit.

Re: smelling marijuana, I believe they train cops to recognize the smell. When I was a Brownie, I learned the smell while selling Girl Scout cookies. My dad was with me, and told me to remember the smell (which he knew from teaching junior high). I still can't believe anybody willingly subjects themselves to that stink.

This sounds like an old neighbor downstairs in my apartment building. The guy kept going off his meds and going onto drugs. The cops tried hard not to arrest him, because he'd gone to high school with the owners and lots of them, and because they knew he was annoying but harmless. They would stop by whenever he started running down the halls banging on doors, and he would run back to his apartment and get quiet.

But one day he panicked when they showed up, and started flushing his drugs and burning his marijuana (which my other neighbors tell me was VERY noticeable outside the apartment, both under the door and out the window; I believe it from other smells in the building).

When the cops told him they'd have to take him in now, he panicked more and said he had a rifle (which they were almost sure he didn't). Unfortunately, his window overlooked an elementary school up the hill, so the cops decided they couldn't overlook it anymore.

So the local SWAT team came and the building was evacuated; but eventually they just coaxed him out. They evicted him and made him go to a treatment home, after that, and I guess he's doing well under supervision like that. I slept through most of the excitement, though, and my nose was pretty clogged that day; so I can't really opine myself.

edutcher: as suburban alludes to, police (and military) officers are introduced (that's the story) to the smell of pot in a classroom controlled burn.

No way this bust should get upheld. But the flexibility of the leftist legal mind never fails to amaze me: Constitutional rights mean something when they support the conclusion, but are only guidelines when they don't.

Whether exigent circumstances exist to allow the police to break down your door depends on the crime they are investigating. Althouse’s late colleague, the preeminent Gordon Baldwin, argued a case on this issue to the Supreme Court in the early 1980’s. If I recall, the police were chasing a suspect for a non-jailable offense and he ran into his house. The police broke in and the Court suppressed the evidence.